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Tue, 31 Mar 2015 20:35:04 +0000enhourly1What “Veep” got right about our governmenthttp://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/what_veep_got_right_about_our_government/
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/what_veep_got_right_about_our_government/#commentsThu, 27 Jun 2013 16:34:00 +0000bzeffhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13338801After two full seasons of "Veep," it should be clear that Armando Ianucci's HBO satire is the most accurately scripted show ever made about American politics -- full stop. There is no need to qualify or massage that statement; it's just flat-out true, even though I'm guessing many people who work in politics despise it.

The reason that's my guess is because unlike other movies and TV shows about politics, "Veep" -- whose season finale just aired -- portrays politicians, staffers, lobbyists and reporters not as the heroic idealists and brilliant Machiavellis that politicos desperately want to see looking back at them from the mirror. Instead, "Veep" shows Washington for what it is: not merely Hollywood for trolls, but a place where painfully average and often untalented drones follow their star-fucking ambitions only to be caught in a soul-sapping system that devours whatever last remaining shreds of humanity they still possessed.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/what_veep_got_right_about_our_government/feed/9Sequester could hamper Wall Street investigationshttp://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/sequester_could_hamper_wall_street_investigations/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/sequester_could_hamper_wall_street_investigations/#commentsTue, 05 Mar 2013 15:26:00 +0000nlennardhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13219157Just as the righteous hammer of justice was balanced above the malfeasant heads of Wall Street executives -- poised for a strike four years in the making -- that pesky sequester comes along and hampers government investigations into Wall Street fraud.

As Ryan Grim at HuffPo noted Tuesday, The Federal Bureau of Investigations told lawmakers in a recent letter that across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration "will cause current financial crimes investigations to slow as workload is spread among a reduced workforce. In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence."

"Left unchecked, fraud and malfeasance in the financial, securities, and related industries could hurt the integrity of U.S. markets," wrote FBI Director Robert Mueller III.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/sequester_could_hamper_wall_street_investigations/feed/0What would happen without a moderator?http://www.salon.com/2012/10/07/a_world_without_debate_moderators/
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/07/a_world_without_debate_moderators/#commentsSun, 07 Oct 2012 16:54:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13032978The reviews of Jim Lehrer’s performance as last week’s debate moderator, you might have noticed, weren’t so hot. The 78-year-old semi-retired newsman has come under fire for, among other transgressions, letting the candidates (well, Mitt Romney, mainly) walk all over him, focusing on too narrow a range of topics, asking questions that were too broad, and shying away from obvious follow-ups.

The Commission of Presidential Debates, which selected Lehrer, defended his performance by essentially arguing that the moderator who moderates less moderates best.

The goal of the debate, the CPD said in a statement, “was to have a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator or timing signals. Jim Lehrer implemented the format exactly as it was designed by the CPD and announced in July.”

But this raises a question: If the moderator’s job is to get out of the way, why have a moderator – and a tightly regimented format – in the first place?

According to Gallup, 36 percent of voters said Romney’s comments made them less likely to support him, while 20 percent said they were more likely. Among independents, the spread was 29-15 percent – a clear sign, it seemed, that the video was hurting Romney with voters he badly needs to win over.

But a new study today casts doubt on this interpretation. According to a survey conducted by the Vanderbilt/YouGov Ad Rating Project, the video is enraging many Democrats and rallying some Republicans around Romney, but having essentially no impact on actual swing voters.

“I’m not suggesting Romney is benefiting from this,” John Geer, the Vanderbilt political scientist who is overseeing the project, told me a few minutes ago. “It’s just further evidence that the fundamentals of this election are unchanged.”

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/09/20/study_47_percent_isnt_hurting_mitt_where_it_counts/feed/85Elizabeth Warren is winninghttp://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/elizabeth_warren_is_winning/
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/elizabeth_warren_is_winning/#commentsMon, 17 Sep 2012 14:43:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13013809Just when Democrats were beginning to doubt her, Elizabeth Warren has now received the best polling news of her campaign. Two new surveys put Scott Brown’s Democratic challenger in the lead, one by 6 points and the other by 2.

This represents a significant shift from a few weeks ago, when Brown seemed to be opening a healthy lead, and suggests that the Democrats’ successful Charlotte convention – which featured a prime-time appearance by Warren – has helped energize the Democratic base and brings traditionally Democratic voters home. As PPP, whose survey puts Warren up 48 to 46 percent, explains on its site:

Warren's gaining because Democratic voters are coming back into the fold. Last month she led only 73-20 with Democrats. Now she's up 81-13. That explains basically the entire difference between the two polls. There are plenty of Democrats who like Scott Brown- 29% approve of him- but fewer are now willing to vote for him.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/elizabeth_warren_is_winning/feed/17Did Warren beat the Cowboys?http://www.salon.com/2012/09/05/elizabeth_warren%e2%80%99s_problem/
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/05/elizabeth_warren%e2%80%99s_problem/#commentsWed, 05 Sep 2012 23:32:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13002415There was a big problem with Elizabeth Warren’s prime-time convention address, and it had nothing to do with its content, her delivery or the audience’s reaction. It was counter-programming that undermined her – the Giants-Cowboys NFL season opener that was in the third quarter and a Red Sox-Mariners game that was about to start as Warren took the stage in Charlotte.

Warren’s opponent, Scott Brown, has forged a powerful cultural connection with blue-collar and middle -class voters in Massachusetts that is to a striking degree rooted in sports. He talks frequently of his affinity for the state’s four professional teams, has campaigned with famous athletes, and aired ads in which he sings the praises of the Celtics, Red Sox and Fenway Park. He’s also made regular appearances on a Boston sports radio station.

That’s what he told a local television reporter yesterday in an interview that Republicans are now playing up aggressively. Obama explained his self-grading this way:

“What I would say is the steps that we have taken in saving the auto industry, in making sure that college is more affordable, in investing in clean energy, science and technology and research – those are all things that we’re going to need over the long term.”

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/09/04/the_ghosts_of_2009/feed/15A knack for screwing up the easy stuffhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/a_knack_for_screwing_up_the_easy_stuff/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/a_knack_for_screwing_up_the_easy_stuff/#commentsFri, 31 Aug 2012 14:40:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12998160Before going any further with this post, it would probably be a good idea to point out that Mitt Romney currently trails President Obama by less than 1 point in the Real Clear Politics polling average and that – even after the whole chair thing – he’s likely to get some kind of post-convention bump in the next few days. In other words, Romney will probably be ahead when the Democratic convention opens next Tuesday. And even though Obama will probably then get a bump of his own, Romney figures to be tied or within striking distance as the general election phase formally begins.

All of this is a long way of saying: We may end up looking back at this election and realizing there was nothing Romney and his team could have done to lose it.

That said, wow – they sure do have a knack for making a mess of things that should be impossible to screw up.

Clint Eastwood’s prime-time colloquy with an empty chair is a perfect example. Apparently, the Romney team enlisted the octogenarian actor/director in the hopes that he would deliver the same remarks he offered at a private Romney fundraising event last month.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/a_knack_for_screwing_up_the_easy_stuff/feed/109Obama, Romney and the empathy gaphttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/23/obama_romney_and_the_empathy_gap/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/23/obama_romney_and_the_empathy_gap/#commentsThu, 23 Aug 2012 16:05:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12990407I wrote last Friday about the Romney campaign’s efforts to neutralize Medicare as an issue. The idea isn’t that the Romney team actually think they can run and win on Medicare, even though, for obvious reasons, they have to claim this; it’s that they recognize the political poison that Paul Ryan’s “premium support” plan represents and will consider it a triumph if they can keep it from costing them significant support.

The plan that they’ve settled on is to make claims about Obama’s own handling of Medicare that, to the casual voter, sound just as alarming as anything Democrats are saying about Ryan’s plan. So it was that the GOP ticket spent much of last week denouncing Obama’s “raid” on the program – the $716 billion in non-benefit cuts that are part of the Affordable Care Act. That the cuts are also part of Ryan’s budget plan are beside the point, at least as far as Romney’s campaign is concerned. The idea is to force Obama onto the defense and to prompt swing voters to throw up their hands in confusion or exasperation and move on to another topic, like the economy.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/23/obama_romney_and_the_empathy_gap/feed/12Will Todd Akin play ball?http://www.salon.com/2012/08/20/will_todd_akin_play_ball/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/20/will_todd_akin_play_ball/#commentsMon, 20 Aug 2012 16:50:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12987622There are probably Democrats having flashbacks today, as an effort by some Republicans to push Todd Akin out of Missouri’s Senate race builds.

Ten years ago, there was a similar sense of panic among national Democrats. Their party had pulled even in the Senate in the 2000 elections, then grabbed control six months later when Vermont’s Jim Jeffords defected from the GOP. But now with the 2002 midterms approaching, their tenuous hold on the chamber – their only slice of power in George W. Bush’s Washington – was in grave danger, thanks in no small part to the senior senator from New Jersey.

Robert Torricelli, whose political career began with charges of “gross ethical misconduct” in a Rutgers student election that was eventually invalidated, was reeling from claims by a Korean-American businessman, David Chang, that he’d plied the senator with tens of thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts. Federal prosecutors declined to indict him, but in the summer of 2002 the Senate ethics committee “severely admonished” Torricelli, who was seeking a second term that fall.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/20/will_todd_akin_play_ball/feed/4The new Zell Millerhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/the_new_zell_miller/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/the_new_zell_miller/#commentsThu, 16 Aug 2012 16:43:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12984006It’s hard to believe it’s come to this if your memory of Artur Davis extends back more than, say, two years.

The news today is that Davis, a 44-year-old former congressman who cut his ties to the Democratic Party after losing a 2010 gubernatorial primary in Alabama, will speak at the Republican convention in Tampa later this month. This will essentially make Davis the 2012 equivalent of Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat who fired up the GOP’s 2004 convention with a blistering attack on John Kerry, although it doesn’t appear that Davis will enjoy the same prime-time speaking slot that Miller was given.

Whenever it’s delivered, you can be sure his speech will be a hit with the delegates. Davis is a strong and polished communicator, for one thing, and there’s also the cliché about converts making the best preachers. His race also looms large. The belief that they’ve been unfairly branded as racists for their opposition to President Obama is a source of particular outrage for many white conservatives; thus, the delegates figure to be extra-excited to hear from a black speaker who once backed the president but has since seen the light.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/the_new_zell_miller/feed/28What Pelosi and Romney have in commonhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/13/what_pelosi_and_romney_have_in_common/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/13/what_pelosi_and_romney_have_in_common/#commentsMon, 13 Aug 2012 16:36:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12980069Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi have something in common: They both see Paul Ryan as the key to shaking up a campaign that wasn’t going the way they’d hoped it would. But instead of worrying about the presidential race like Romney, it’s the battle for control of the House that’s foremost on Pelosi’s mind. And up until now, things haven’t looked promising for her side.

Democrats need a net gain of 25 seats this fall to win back the lower chamber. There was a moment last year when pulling it off seemed plausible, but several developments since then have drastically diminished the Democrats' odds.

The first involves the economy, which hasn’t gotten worse since the spring and summer of 2011 but hasn’t exactly roared back to life, either. This has made it very likely that the presidential race will be close; and the closer the race is, the weaker President Obama’s down-ballot coattails figure to be.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/13/what_pelosi_and_romney_have_in_common/feed/4President Ryan — the truth behind Mitt’s flubhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/mitt%e2%80%99s_freudian_flub/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/mitt%e2%80%99s_freudian_flub/#commentsSun, 12 Aug 2012 14:00:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12979536In terms of theater, it was an unfortunate mistake when Mitt Romney introduced Paul Ryan as “the next president of the United States” on Saturday. In terms of substance, though, the slip-up was unintentionally revealing. Because while it will be the former Massachusetts governor who is sworn in as the 45th president if the GOP ticket prevails this November, it will be Ryan who sets the new administration’s policy direction.

The Ryan selection really is the perfect expression of the relationship that exists between Romney and his party’s base. For a host of reasons, Romney has never been a natural match for the conservative leaders and voters who hold sway in the GOP, and since turning his attention to the national stage, Romney has consistently erred on the side of accommodating them.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/mitt%e2%80%99s_freudian_flub/feed/53Paul Ryan and the right’s long gamehttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/paul_ryan_and_the_rights_long_game/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/paul_ryan_and_the_rights_long_game/#commentsSat, 11 Aug 2012 19:10:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12979275Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate could have real electoral implications in November. This in and of itself would be unusual.

Modern campaign history shows that a vice-presidential candidate generally has little to no effect on the outcome. Under the best-case scenario, he or she might provide a modest, concentrated boost to the ticket; under the worst-case scenario, he or she can cause damage that’s broader, but still not that severe.

Ryan is a somewhat unique V.P. pick because his resume, personality, life story and geographic base aren’t really what landed him on Romney’s ticket. His budget blueprint did, though, and the basic principles behind it – dramatic changes in social safety net programs, in the tax code, and in the government’s basic spending priorities – will now dominate the fall campaign.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/paul_ryan_and_the_rights_long_game/feed/29The smell of panichttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/the_smell_of_panic/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/the_smell_of_panic/#commentsSat, 11 Aug 2012 13:16:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12979079The most important thing to know about Mitt Romney’s running-mate choice is this: It’s not the move he would have made if the campaign was going the way he hoped it would.

Until now, the Romney strategy has been relentlessly single-minded. He’s had no interest in articulating or embracing specific policy proposals and has generally shied away from saying or doing anything that anyone might find at all unsettling. More than any other candidate in recent history, he has strained to be generic, someone positioned to serve as a protest vehicle for swing voters who are inclined to vote President Obama out.

At the heart of this strategy was a belief that the dreary state of “Obama’s economy” would by itself be sufficient to bring about a Republican White House restoration. Bring every reporter’s question, every Obama attack, and every story in the news back to the stubbornly high unemployment rate and that would give voters reason enough to check his name off.

But it’s been a few months since Romney locked up the Republican nomination, and in that time a few things have become clear.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/the_smell_of_panic/feed/183Actually, Elizabeth Warren is doing pretty wellhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/10/actually_elizabeth_warren_is_doing_pretty_well/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/10/actually_elizabeth_warren_is_doing_pretty_well/#commentsFri, 10 Aug 2012 16:03:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12977819In The New Republic, Alex MacGillis presents a portrait of Elizabeth Warren as an unexpectedly floundering Senate candidate at risk of losing a race her party should be winning:

And yet, in one of the bluest states in the country, Warren is running well behind Barack Obama, deadlocked with Scott Brown in her bid for a seat that many Democrats had assumed would be an easy pickup. “I’m candidly perplexed by what’s going on,” says Tom Birmingham, the former Democratic president of the state Senate. “Because I did think that, if the Democrats had a strong candidate—and I would have regarded Elizabeth Warren as a strong candidate—that we’d really be in a favorable position.”

There’s some good stuff in the piece, and at least anecdotally there’s something to it: I’ve heard more than a few Democrats in and out of Massachusetts express concern that Warren has adopted a style that’s too cautious and scripted (where are the viral moments?) and that her campaign has at times seemed off its game (particularly during the needlessly protracted Cherokee drama).

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/10/actually_elizabeth_warren_is_doing_pretty_well/feed/24GOP’s RomneyCare freak-outhttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/the_romneycare_freak_out/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/the_romneycare_freak_out/#commentsWed, 08 Aug 2012 19:23:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12975985Mitt Romney’s campaign press secretary, Andrea Saul, has kicked up a bit of a storm with her response to a new ad from a pro-Obama super PAC.

The spot, which was unveiled Wednesday, features a man who lost his job when Bain Capital shuttered the Kansas City steel plant he worked at in 2001. “When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant,” he says in the ad, “I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill.” Some vital context is missing, and the Romney campaign is on solid ground in crying foul.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/the_romneycare_freak_out/feed/32Getting the Carter treatmenthttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/getting_the_carter_treatment/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/getting_the_carter_treatment/#commentsTue, 07 Aug 2012 16:33:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12974589It was announced this morning that Jimmy Carter will address next month’s Democratic convention in a videotaped message that will be featured in prime time.

For the former president, this represents a step up from last time around, when he was pointedly denied a spot at the podium and allowed only a brief, non-prime-time video message. This led to one of the more awkward scenes from the Denver convention; while Carter and his wife walked onstage to wave to the crowd after the video, the podium was lowered into the floor – almost as if convention organizers were making sure he didn’t get any ideas.

That treatment speaks to the very up-and-down relationship Carter has had with his party since leaving the White House in 1981.

For the first national convention of his post-presidency, San Francisco ’84, he was offered prominent seating, but not much else (you can watch him at the 2:20 mark here enjoying Mario Cuomo’s keynote address). Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign was asking Americans “why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?” and Democrats weren’t eager to showcase the man voters had rejected in the last election. "In 1984, I was very unpopular with the Democratic Party," Carter said years later. “I had committed the unforgivable sin of losing.”

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/getting_the_carter_treatment/feed/8A super PAC wake-up call for Demshttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/a_super_pac_wake_up_call_for_dems/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/a_super_pac_wake_up_call_for_dems/#commentsMon, 06 Aug 2012 19:26:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12973912For the third straight month, Mitt Romney and the RNC have outraised President Obama and the DNC. This time the margin is more than $25 million -- $101.3 million to $75 million. Last month it was about $35 million, and in May it was $16 million. It’s starting to look like this trend will last through the fall, and that the incumbent president will end up with less money to spend than his challenger – especially when you factor in the considerable advantage Republicans enjoy with super PAC money.

If this sounds like an election-altering development, just consider that a total of $50 million was spent last week alone by the campaigns and by outside groups, virtually all of it in a small number of swing states. As NBC’s First Read puts it:

]]>http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/a_super_pac_wake_up_call_for_dems/feed/17Republicans are scared of gay marriagehttp://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/republicans_are_scared_of_gay_marriage/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/republicans_are_scared_of_gay_marriage/#commentsMon, 06 Aug 2012 16:19:00 +0000skornackihttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12973526Writing at Politico, Maggie Haberman and Emily Schultheis pick up on the relative silence of Mitt Romney and much of the Republican Party’s national leadership over Democrats’ embrace of gay marriage. This doesn’t mean, they are quick to point out, that the language of the GOP’s platform will be any different than usual – just that Romney has little interest in playing up his gay marriage opposition on the campaign trail.

On one level, this reflects a basic political calculation. Support for marriage equality is nearing majority status nationally, and it’s already there among Democrats (65 percent) and independents (51 percent), according to a recent Pew poll. But it lags far, far behind among Republican voters, only 24 percent of whom favor it.